Python for Pizza: How One Florida Restaurant Is Solving an Invasive Species Crisis

Dustin Crum, owner of Wildman’s Pizza, Pasta and Python in Everglades City, Florida, is running one of the most unconventional business models in America right now. He accepts dead Burmese pythons as payment for free large specialty pizzas. It sounds ridiculous on the surface, but the initiative addresses a genuine environmental and social problem. Local kids catch pythons but don’t know what to do with them and often have little money for food. Meanwhile, hunters competing in the Florida Python Challenge have multiple pythons with nowhere to deliver them. Crum’s system connects these two groups while removing invasive snakes from the ecosystem.

What makes Crum’s operation even more impressive is his waste-nothing approach. He extracts fat from the pythons to create skincare products and oils, crafts jewelry from the bones, and uses the meat for pizza toppings (though licensing laws require him to give these pizzas away free rather than sell them). This comprehensive utilization reflects a broader sustainability trend where businesses maximize the value of every resource. The python meat itself isn’t the novelty—it’s the entire system of turning a destructive invasive species into useful products and community meals.

Florida’s Everglades are home to an estimated 300,000 Burmese pythons, a population explosion that began in the 1970s and accelerated dramatically. Female pythons lay up to 70 eggs at a time, and with no natural predators in Florida, the population is nearly impossible to control through conventional means. These apex predators outcompete and consume native wildlife at alarming rates, making them one of Earth’s most destructive invasive species. While Crum’s pizza-for-python program won’t solve the larger ecological crisis, it represents grassroots problem-solving that feeds people while removing predators from the environment. Have you heard of other businesses finding creative ways to tackle invasive species or environmental problems?